2018 was a big year for Point-of-Care 3D printing, with thousands of patients helped and major milestones achieved. We expect this trend to continue in 2019, further increasing access to 3D printing for clinicians and enabling more patients to benefit.

Deakin University in Australia has become the go-to place for local hospitals to discover solutions for their most complex cases and get a glimpse of what a hospital of the future could look like. Leading the front at Deakin’s School of Engineering is Dr. Mazher Iqbal Mohammed, who is working to come up with everything from clinical solutions like tailor-made ear prostheses to science fiction-like technology such as a mask that can minimize radiation dosages in radiotherapy treatments. He says the thing to look out for next is automating the process to make so-called “just-in-time solutions” and to add other technologies into the mix – from sensors and electronics to AI and machine learning.

From medicine to cinema, architecture to automotive, 3D printing has made its presence felt in hugely diverse fields. We collected our best 3D printing blog stories of the year so you can say goodbye to 2018 with some inspiration on what additive manufacturing can do for the world.

When Daria, a five-year-old German girl who loves to dance, was diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma in her right leg, the fight started to save her limb. But because this rare malignant bone tumor was so large, extending almost to the distal femur, removing it while retaining enough bone to allow her to walk normally again required complex, precision surgery. Thankfully, her surgeons had some trusted high-tech helpers to call upon.

VR tools have taken the gaming world by storm, but an application that keenly interests Materialise is the potential of virtual reality for multidisciplinary collaboration and education. For medical training, visualization in virtual reality could serve as the perfect supplement to 3D printing. Here are three benefits VR/AR setups can bring to a hospital’s training program, and three pitfalls to watch out for.

This June, Materialise hosted a 3D Printing in Medicine Course. Tune in to this unmissable lecture series featuring firsthand surgeon insights on how different medical specializations are using 3D Printing today, from the cardiovascular field to orthopedics.

What’s it like to be one of our Medical Application Engineers? In fact, what does that even mean? Materialise Medical spearheads our innovations in Medical 3D Printing, which include software that allows its users to visualize the anatomy of their patients in 3D, create customized 3D-printed patient guides – and even customized 3D-printed titanium implants! Our Medical Application Engineers come in many shapes and forms, and no two days look the same for them. We took a closer look at a normal day for Xavier Mottart, an application engineer for hip and shoulder implants and oncology cases, and Ines Da Silva, team leader of the medical sales application engineering team.

In today’s blogpost we want to give you five quick tips to improve your segmentation process with Materialise Mimics Innovation Suite 21. After all, it’s the first and often the most important part of your workflow!